NixOs

This repo contains the nixos cfg for a few of my systems. It tends to be under heavy development as I am still in the "keep trying things" phase of my Nix learnings. This repo has moved from Gnome -> Pantheon -> Hyprland - > Gnome -> sway -> Hyprland -> Gnome. You see where I am going with this. It "feels" like Gnome is where I plan to stay for some time. I found the user experience to be good, and the OOTB configuration seems to work best. It allows me to stop messing around to a degree and get "back to work."

Gnome works for me now with:

• pop-shell for tiling
• just perfection to remove window controls, hide my panel unless I am in overwiew, etc
• stylix

It is now truely minimal in apperance which is what my brain needs. And most stuff looks the same!

Status

WIP, forever.

Code Flow

• All code under the modules folder is imported via autoimport.nix. The modules folder code is set up with options, which are not used unless you enable the options in your system config. Then, archetype on the systems of choice

Example of a system cfg

# Shows using the archetype to enable a laptop and workstation
archetype = {
    laptop.enable = true;
    workstation.enable = true;
  };

    # enable my user of choice
    # Note - still some refactoring in some modules to adjust if you move from a "dustin" user to an additional user or different user
    users.dustin.enable = true;

    # enable the desktop I want to use on this system
    desktops.gnome.enable = true;

    # enable an app directly vs via an archetype or suite
    apps = {
        syncthing = {
            enable = true;
            host.evo = true;
        };

        # another exaple of direct module use
        desktopFile = {
        enable = true;
        reboot-firmware = true;
        seabird = true;
        beeper = true;
        monokle = true;
        cursor = true;
        spacedrive = true;
        };
    };

Home Manager Usage

• I do use Home Manager, but not in the usual pattern.
• I hated having two different locations to configure the same application if I had to (or wanted to) use base nix and home manager config.
• So, I figured out how to have it all in one file. The modules/desktops/gnome/default.nix have an excellent example of this. In that file, you will see:

# Above is traditional NixOS config

##### Home Manager Config options #####
    home-manager.users."${user-settings.user.username}" = {
# Everything in here is home-manager config

Keyring

At times, I have had it where the keyring would not unlock. The solution was to go nuclear with rm ~/.local/share/keyrings/login.keyring, reboot, and let the keyring be recreated. be sure to run ssh-add ~/.ssh/id_ed25519 and ssh-add ~/.ssh/id_rsa after reboot. Ensure ssh-agent is running.

Secrets

• My secrets just use git-crypt.
• I know about SOPs, etc., but I wanted to be able to make a secret substitution in my code. You can see its use in modules/cli/git/default.nix, such as (I was rendering a config file for a tool):

[openai]
        api_base = "https://api.openai.com/v1"
        api_key = "${secrets.openai.api-key}"
        #model = "gpt-3.5-turbo-16k"
        retries = 2
        proxy = ""

Notes

Slack themes

• use a colour picker to get the hex values
• Slack takes in hex values for colours, in this order:
  • System Navigation, Selected Items, Presence Indication, Notifications
• Generally darkest to lightest
• ie Stylix Generated: #282828,#323730,#689D6A,#8EC07C
• ie Tokyo Night: #202330,#414868,#7AA2F7,#7DCFFF

Too Many Files Open

I have run into this only once, but it is one of those things that I will forget on how to fix.

• open a bash shell (does not seem to work in fish).
• run the command ulimit -n 4096.
• in the same shell, run your rebuild.

Espanso

The Espanso service is funny. At times, the service will not start after an update. The fix "seems" to be:

• upgrade the system.
• Unregister the Espanso service with espanso service unregister
• reboot, and let the services.espanso.enable = true; in my config, start the service.
• TODO: test- espanso stop; espanso start --unmanaged

Getting StartupWMClass For Web Apps

Gnome

Getting the StartupWMClass is a pain in Wayland.

• I enabled the Window Class extension in Gnome.
• Then, you can use a command to get the window's class.
• See the get_wm_class fish shell function in my fish module.

Steps for my setup

Note: I use Chromium, which also works with Brave or any browser supporting the same cli flags. You can set the desired browser in the module where you define the web app. See modules/apps/gcal-br/default.nix for an example.

• Temporarily create a desktop shortcut for the site to wrap in Chromium
• Copy the icons using the lib/cbb-webwrap/copy-icons.shscript (havecopy-iconsalias, orcopy_icons` script in your path)
• Delete the app in Chromium
• run chromium --new-window --app="https://URL" and leave it running
• Run get_wm_class in the terminal to get the StartupWMClass (save it somewhere)
• I have a nix function for creating a web app in lib/cbb-webwrap/default.nixAn excellent example of how to use that nix function can be seen in modules/apps/gcal-br/default.nix
• Icons will be funky until you log out and back in or reboot
• Enable web app in the modules/archetype/workstation.nix file (or as appropriate in your setup)
• rebuild

KDE

Plasma Manager does not capture "every" setting at this point in time. I have found that I need to go into the settings and adjust some things manually.

Manual Plasma Settings

• Set the bar position to the left.

TODO

• Installation changes
  • Leverage a shell.nix`
  • Move to disko for evo laptop
  • Move to disko for rembot tower
  • Doc how to install with minimal iso and use this repo during installation
• Merge all wallpaper references to use a wallpaper from a single location
• conditional to put the proper scaled wallpaper on my laptop
• strip out unused code
• Test cosmic when ready to maybe replace gnome
• Open bugs against Stylix
  • transparent title bar on xwayland apps due to adw-gtk3 theme
  • xwayland apps in fullscreen go to the corner
  • xwaayland apps such as slack are slightly smaller using gaps with pop-shell
• go through TODO comments in code